More than 50 husbands, wives, mothers and fathers of active-duty U.S. troops have been pulled into immigration detention since President Trump's second term began, according to an Associated Press investigation published this week. Six of those relatives have already been deported, a seventh left the country voluntarily, and at least eight remained in custody as of publication.
Reporters built the count by combing through thousands of federal court filings gathered by the Habeas Dockets project, cross-checking existing news coverage, and independently confirming details with the families and lawyers involved — a process AP itself describes as producing a floor, not a ceiling, since the government keeps no dedicated tally of these cases. For decades, close relatives of service members were treated as effectively off-limits for deportation enforcement under an informal, bipartisan understanding. That understanding has now visibly cracked.
A Recruiting Promise That Predates Two Administrations
The relatives being detained are, in many cases, the same people the military has spent years promising to protect. A program known as military parole-in-place lets spouses, children and parents of active-duty troops and veterans apply for legal status without leaving the country — though people who overstayed a visa, or who already have a case pending at the border, typically don't qualify.
The benefit isn't new, and it isn't partisan in origin. It was created in 2007 under President George W. Bush during the Iraq War, then formally written into policy under President Barack Obama. Army and National Guard recruiters continue to cite it today as a reason to enlist. The Marine Corps, notably, is the outlier: it quietly stopped advertising the benefit in June 2025 after AP began asking questions about it, while Army and National Guard recruiters kept promoting it.
The paperwork itself has become part of the problem. Processing times for parole-in-place applications have roughly doubled under the current administration, now averaging close to a year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data cited by AP. That stretch of limbo has coincided with a policy reversal: in April 2025, immigration authorities rescinded guidance that had previously treated a family's military ties as a reason to hold off on enforcement. Agents were told instead that a uniform in the family offers no protection from the immigration code.
A Former ICE Attorney Calls It a Break From Practice
Dan Gividen spent three years as one of ICE's deputy chief counsels, a stretch that ran through the first Trump administration. He now represents a father who has spent more than eight months in custody while his son serves in the Army. Gividen says that during his time inside the agency, cases against a service member's immediate family were essentially never opened unless a violent crime was involved. He calls the current approach simply "outrageous."
Margaret Stock, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who now practices immigration law, told AP that agents once routinely cleared out old removal orders against these relatives rather than acting on them — the opposite of what's happening now.
Marine Cpl. Jose Manuel Vilchis-Valle says recruiters leaned on the family-protection benefit when they persuaded him to enlist. His mother, Ursula Borja Valle, had lived in the U.S. since the 1990s with no known criminal record. She was detained at what was supposed to be a routine appointment in August 2025 and deported to Mexico within a week — while Vilchis-Valle was still trying to help her clear a decades-old removal order using the very benefit tied to his service.
In Louisiana, newlywed Annie Ramos was detained by ICE agents inside Fort Polk's visitor center while attempting to register as an Army spouse, days after marrying Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank. She spent five days in custody before her release; she now wears a GPS monitor while her removal case continues, according to reporting from the Shreveport Times and confirmed by a DHS statement to ABC News.
Paola Clouatre, married to a Marine Corps veteran, was released from ICE custody after a federal judge paused her deportation order and Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy's office pressed DHS for her release.
And in El Paso, Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez watched his wife, Cristy, get detained outside a Walmart while their six-year-old daughter stood beside them. He says it's made it difficult to stay focused on his job.
Homeland Security Pushes Back
DHS disputes the framing of AP's findings, though it declined to discuss individual cases in detail. The agency says eight of the people counted already had standing removal orders, two had prior convictions for drunken driving or drug offenses, and several had been removed from the country before. In a public statement, DHS maintained that military service "does not automatically grant lawful immigration status."
Public backlash over a handful of the more visible cases has been enough to prompt direct intervention from DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin — the former Oklahoma senator confirmed to the role earlier this year — who has personally stepped in to secure the release of several spouses. Separately, DHS told Democratic senators that between January 2025 and January 2026, it detained 125 military veterans, placed 34 of them into removal proceedings, and arrested more than 150 of their immediate family members — figures that suggest the scope of the crackdown on military-connected households extends well beyond the 50-plus cases AP was able to independently confirm.
Lawmakers Take Notice
The findings landed amid ongoing scrutiny from Capitol Hill. California Rep. Gil Cisneros, a former undersecretary of defense for personnel who has introduced legislation to make it harder to deny parole-in-place to military relatives, called the AP findings alarming, and the advocacy group Repatriate Our Patriots echoed that concern this week, according to reporting from WUSF. That reaction builds on a broader investigation opened roughly a year earlier: in September 2025, Sen. Ruben Gallego joined more than 60 Democratic colleagues in demanding an explanation from DHS and the Pentagon over the treatment of non-citizen service members and their families, warning that the policy risked undermining recruitment and troop readiness.
That readiness argument carries added weight now: the United States has been engaged in active military conflict with Iran since late February 2026, a period during which advocates argue detaining troops' relatives is an especially costly time to strain morale and force families apart.
